


Till Time Ignites a Spark

by Teleri



Series: 100 Lifetimes [1]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: 100 Lifetimes Challenge, Alternate Universe, Angst, Fluff, Idiots in Love, M/M, Non-Chronological, POV Loki (Marvel), POV Thor (Marvel), Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-27
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-17 22:23:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17569040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teleri/pseuds/Teleri
Summary: He'd make a deal, he didn't care about the terms. One lifetime wasn't enough, not when it ended like this.Written for the 100 Lifetimes Challenge by Wisterings





	1. Follow

“I’m not your brother!” Loki shouts. 

“You are,” Thor repeats, not for the first time.

Loki laughs hysterically. “I’m not. I’ve never had a brother! How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not. Please, just,” Loki runs his hands through his hair and sighs, “please, leave me alone.”

Thor knows different, Thor knows better. 

“I won’t,” he says. Not until you remember. Not until you come back to me.

“What do you want from me?” Loki reaches into his pocket and takes out his wallet. “You want money?” he asks, hastily pulling notes out. “Take it,” he extends a shaking hand out to Thor.

“I do not want your money,” Thor says. 

Loki throws the wallet to the floor. “Then what do you want from me?” he asks, voice shaking. “I see you. You may think I don’t but I do,” Loki points a finger at him. “I see you follow me home, I see you follow me in the morning when I leave. I see you, everywhere I go.” He swallows and hides his face in his hands. “What is it that I have that you want?” He asks in a small voice.

Everything, Thor wants to say. 

“I know you,” he says instead, “and you know me.”

Loki scrunches his hands into his hair, pulling so harshly Thor can see where his skin is pulled taught.

“I don’t know you,” he mumbles over and over. 

“You do, if only you’d remember,” Thor replies.

Loki throws his hands in the air, “what am I meant to remember?” he asks, voice raised. “I don’t know you, I have never known you. I don’t want to know you. All I want, is for you to leave me alone!”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?” Loki asks, eyes wide, chest heaving and hands trembling. 

“No.” Thor replies.

Loki twitches, and then throws a right hook at Thor's face. Thor catches it with ease and he grips Loki's wrist with enough force to bruise.

“We’re brothers,” Thor repeats. “We are family.”

Loki meets his gaze, defiant.

“I have a family,” he spits.

Thor reaches up to run his fingers along Loki’s cheek. “You don’t have me though.” 

Loki yanks his wrist free, recoiling from Thor's touch, and when Thor looks into his eyes, he sees nothing but indifference. 

“I don’t need you.”


	2. Promise

“Remember to call us,” his mother says, squeezing him extra tight.

“Come on now Frig, he’s seventeen he’ll be fine,” Odin says, guiding her away with a hand on her arm. 

Loki gives him a sheepish smile. He and Odin hadn’t gotten off to the best of starts, but over the past year they’d managed to sort through most of their differences, and Odin was supportive in a way that Loki's real father never was.

Odin steps forward, clasps Loki's shoulder and shakes his hand, saying, “stay out of trouble, not too many late nights and,” he looks back at Frigga, “call your mother, she worries.”

Loki smiles and nods, “I know. Make sure she doesn’t worry too much?”

“It’s a full time job worrying over your children,” Odin says, “but I’ll do my best.”

Odin turns back to look at the small child clutching Frigga’s skirt, “Thor, don’t you want to say goodbye?”

Thor frantically shakes his head, burying his face in the folds of his mother’s skirt.

Frigga places a comforting hand on his head, “goodbyes aren’t forever,” she says.

Loki hears Thor sniff before he whispers, “some are.”

“Not this one, come on,” both Frigga and Odin nudge him.

Thor begrudgingly shuffles forward, sending their mother a rather betrayed look over his shoulder. 

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Loki says. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

Thor doesn’t acknowledge him, just fiddles with his jumper, picking and pulling at a hole in his sleeve.

“We’ll always be brothers right?” he whispers, eyes focused on the light up parts of his trainers.

Loki crouches down, pokes his finger through the hole in Thor's sleeve and tickles his wrist. Thor doesn’t smile, and even though his trainers have stopped blinking, he doesn’t look up from where they cast patterns onto the floor. 

“Of course we will,” Loki answers.

Thor clutches Loki's finger in both his hands, “you won’t forget me while you’re away?” 

Loki rolls his eyes, “Thor, I’m only going to Norway for the summer-”

“You forget where you’re glasses are when they’re on your head,” Thor reminds him, bottom lip trembling.

Loki sighs and takes Thor’s small, chubby hands into his.

“I could never forget you,” he says.

Thor looks up at him, blue eyes full of tears, “promise?”

Loki pinches his nose, and smiles when Thor giggles despite himself, batting his hand away. He gathers Thor in his arms and Thor comes willingly, immediately throwing his arms around Loki’s neck tight enough to strangle. 

Thor whimpers against his shoulder, “Lolo, promise.”

Loki rests his cheek atop Thor's head as Thor continues to sniffle into the collar of his shirt. Holds him tighter when Thor begins to leave wet patches on his neck.

Loki swallows, his throat tight.

“I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loki spends most of his nights on the phone to Thor, who tells him every detail of his day, no matter how small. Loki hears about everything, from the new pencil case Frigga has bought him for school, to what socks Thor is wearing that day.
> 
> And every Monday, Thor sits by the front door, waiting for the post to be delivered, so he can be the first to get his hands on Loki's latest postcard.


	3. Soulmates

"It's never going to happen," Thor grumbles, flopping down beside Loki.

Loki stares at him, notes how his cheeks are flushed red in annoyance, his eyes glossy with unshed tears. He looks down at Thor's hands, clenching and unclenching into fists, his fingertips are still stained black. 

Loki smiles in spite of himself. But the relief quickly dissipates into guilt, settling like a stone at the bottom of his stomach. 

He tugs at the grass underneath his fingers, "it'll come, in time."

Thor huffs. "When?" He throws a pebble into the stream beside them, it hits another rock and skips out across the other side.

Loki shrugs, turning his own pebble over in his hands, "I don't know."

"Everyone I know has found theirs: Fandral, Steve, Hogun," Thor chucks another rock, doesn’t even bother aiming for the stream, just pulls his arm back and throws. Loki watches it sail through the air to land with a thud near the treeline on the other side of the stream. "Even Tony found his!" Thor goes on, frowning at the ground.

"It's not the end of the world," Loki offers.

"I just want-" Thor cuts himself off and growls before throwing himself back against the grass, golden hair splayed out like a halo.

Loki aches to touch it, to run his fingers through it as he used to when they were boys. He turns the pebble over in his hand again.

"You want..." Loki prompts, laying down beside him.

"I just want to know," Thor murmurs, "I want to know that, that there is someone."

That I won't be alone forever, that I am lovable, Loki hears.

Loki wants to tell him; that he adores him, that anyone would be lucky to bond with him, that Loki would kill to be able to have him. That if only he would love Loki in return, he would never be alone.

"I know," he says instead.

"I-" Thor hesitates and turns his head to look at Loki. "I tried with Sif and," he sighs, "nothing."

Loki looks away and sits up. Begins picking at the grass again, pulling it up blade by blade.

"Sif?"

"Yeah, I just, I wanted to see." Thor sits up with him, fingers brushing through the little pile of grass cuttings that Loki is amassing.

Loki makes a non-committal noise in response.

"I wanted it to be her," Thor admits on a quiet breath.

Loki nods and tries to push down the sense of betrayal burning in his chest. 

"I'm just so fed up of not knowing," Thor says.

Loki could hit him, a part of him wants to. Wants to grip Thor by his collar and shake him until he sees sense, until he sees in Loki what Loki sees in him. He settles for digging his fingers into the earth beneath him, breathing deep through the sting of dirt under his fingernails.

Loki huffs, a shaky sound. He swallows, ignoring the tightness in his throat before muttering, "at least you have one." 

Thor goes quiet, staring at the black of his fingertips. 

Loki sighs, resting his head on his knees. He can barely hear the sound of the stream past the blood rushing through his ears. 

This is how it’s always been, and how it will continue to be. Loki was born without a mark, and therefor without a soulmate. He would always be alone, unbonded, unwanted, unloved in the only way that mattered-

Thor reaches out to gently grasp his wrist.

"I'm sorry. I... forget... that you more than anyone understand my frustrations. I also forget that perhaps you more than anyone also don't care to hear them." Thor sighs. "I'm sorry," he says again.

When Loki doesn't respond, Thor nudges his shoulder. 

"Am I forgiven?"

Loki would forgive him anything. Thor could stomp on his heart ten times over and Loki would still come crawling back for more.

Loki aches to tell him and yet, Loki never would. He could never risk ruining what they have, the friendship they have built together over the years. If he lost Thor, he’d be left with nothing. And Loki knows that it is selfish to hope, to want for more. 

Thor would find someone, one day, next year, next week, tomorrow. Thor would find his partner, move on, settle down, start a family, and Loki would be left trying to piece back together what little was left of his world. 

Every day ticks by like a doomsday count down, and Loki feels it like sand slipping through his fingers. 

He pretends not to feel the tears streaking down his cheeks, and instead focuses on pulling air into his lungs. Thor hadn’t found his someone, not yet. Thor was still his for a little while longer.

"I'm sorry," Thor says for the third time. "I promise to be more considerate from now on." Loki feels Thor's fingers in his hair, trying to tuck it back behind his ear from where it has fallen around his face. "And Loki, in the future, if I'm being an inconsiderate asshole, all you have to do is-" Thor trails off.

"Loki..."

Loki sniffs, wipes a hand across his face, "what?"

"Loki," Thor's voice is unsteady, shaking and breathless.

Loki turns to look at him and sees Thor cradling his hand to his chest.

"What is it?"

Thor looks up at him with wide eyes, open and scared.

A crease forms between Loki's brows.

"Thor, what is it?"

Thor seems to move on autopilot, reaching forward and grabbing a thick strand of Loki's hair. He holds it in front of Loki's eyes and extends the hand he had been cradling to his chest.

Loki blinks and sees that Thor is shaking, that his fingertips are no longer stained black. Instead, they're glowing, akin to the soft light emitted by a full moon.

Loki shakes his head. It can’t be. There’s no possible way that Thor's fingers are fucking glowing and the strand of hair in front of Loki's eyes is, is-

Loki grabs at it with both hands.

It's shining. Just like Thor's fingertips.


End file.
